


sounds like hope

by apolliades



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, M/M, Pining, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Separation Anxiety, Separations, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but not by aliens... by max, but not that alternate ??, i have no idea what to tag this with because that's literally it. that's it, the great big nux rescue mission, these tags are making my fic look so unappealing, violence as affection, violent war boy affection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He’s heard of Coppers, everyone has. Outsiders who patrol the edge of the desert, keeping the gangs from overflowing into the rest of the world. They capture War Boys, Nux knows, and other desert dwellers and take them away to giant Prisons, cages where they’re kept locked up like blood bags for the rest of their half-lives, deprived of doing war, deprived of dying historic, deprived of Valhalla. Nobody comes back from the Prisons."</i>
</p><p>nux gets thrown from his rig and lost in the sand. his lancer is certain he's alive. his lancer is determined to get him back. (unfortunately discontinued until further notice)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

The gangs have ruled the desert since before anyone can remember. 

At first, that was all it was. Gangs. Rogues on souped up motorbikes and cars and trucks pieced together like Frankenstien’s monsters, scrapping with each other over food and territory, oil and engine parts.

And then came Joe Moore, and his biker gang of men so violent they were barely human. They had no allies, no code, no nothing, only war, and hunger for power, and they took control of the desert’s meagre resources, the water, the green, the food and the great Canyon, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake. From there Joe created the Citadel - or the Cult, as it is known to outsiders - taking the chaos of the desert and beating it into a semblance of order, raising armies of sick War Boys and drawing in the helpless Wretched wanderers of the desert with the promise of food, of precious Water. And Joe, in all his power and wonder, was named Immortan, and became God.

The desert is vast and endless, and the other gangs remain - the spiked Buzzards, the horned Motorats, the masked Pole Cats - but they all exist in the shadow of the great Immortan Joe.

Outside of the desert, miles and miles from the gangs and from Joe and his Cult, the Earth turns as always. Everyone knows of the Cult’s existence, but there’s an uneasy truce between the gangs and the rest of Australia. Special Force cops in armoured cars patrol the edge of the desert, and so aside from the occasional clash or arrest or recon mission, the cops keep to the outskirts, the gangs keep to the desert, and the rest of the world keeps away. Mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a (pretty self indulgent) AU that i'm still piecing together - hopefully everything will become clear throughout the actual fic without me needing to write up notes with information but i'm happy to answer any questions
> 
> the main differences are that the citadel & gangs are contained to the desert, rather than this being a post-apocalyptic kind of world - and the relationships between war boys (they're bonded in pairs from pups, and drivers are more valuable than lancers, etc.)


	2. Chapter 2

Nux wakes up to a pounding head and a mouthful of sand and the familiar rumble of an engine and wheels turning beneath him. He must’ve been thrown from the rig, somehow, is his first thought, it must’ve flipped, and now he’s in the back - Slit must’ve hauled him back in, good old Slit, Slit would never leave him alone in the sand just like he’d never leave Slit, because he’s Slit’s driver and Slit is his lancer and they’re _partners_ , partners don’t leave each other, never, never ever never ever never - 

He opens his eyes and everything is black. For a second his chest goes tight with panic because he’s _blind, oh fuck he’s_ blind, and he can’t be blind because he’s a _driver_ \- and then the car jolts and his vision shifts and little dots of light filter into view, burning his headache and he realises he’s a fucking _idiot_ because he’s wearing his damn goggles, bruising into his cheekbones, and they’re just dark with sand and grease and he’s not fucking blind after all, he’s just an idiot. 

His brain really runs slowly when he’s bashed his head because he doesn’t realise his wrists are bound together until he pushes his goggles back and rasps _Slit?_ with sand scraping his tongue. Light fills his head all at once, making him blind again for a moment as his eyes struggle to adjust. This isn’t his rig, this isn’t his rig, he doesn’t know where he is but it isn’t his rig. His chest tightens again as panic grips him, that dreaded, shameful panic that he isn’t supposed to feel like cold claws in his heart, in his lungs. He tries to push it down, replace it with rage and violence, something he can use, something worthy of a War Boy.

He sits up so fast and suddenly that he cracks his head on the roof of the car, and it’s not so much the pain but the shock that sends him reeling. Nux thumps back against the battered leather of the back seats, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. His head is throbbing hard, so hard, like his brain is trying to burst out of his skull, and he’s disorientated beyond belief and fuck, he hurts all over. But that’s nothing new, and he’s a War Boy. He won’t be weak. He _won’t_ be _mediocre_. 

Nux pushes the pain aside like he always does, like he was raised to do, and lunges forwards, pressing his cheek up against the partition that’s keeping him apart from whoever’s driving the car. He slips his fingers through the holes, twisting around the thick wires to rattle the grate, putting his whole body into it. Through the grate and the stars that are bursting in front of his eyes he can see a man in the driver’s seat, a heavy-looking man with broad hunched shoulders and a beat up leather jacket. 

“Hey!” Nux barks, the word tearing rough from his parched sand-scratched throat, “Hey you!”

The dried out skin on his lips splits open, and he licks the blood away urgently. The warm wetness is the smallest hint of relief.

The driver ignores him til he throws his weight hard against the partition, smacking it with his fists and his forehead, all of him vibrating with anxiety and frustration and desperation. 

_“HEY!”_

The driver’s boot hits the brake all at once and Nux’s skull collides hard with the grating and he feels scabs split open on his cheek and the stars are all he can see again and his stomach lurches but he’s a _War Boy War Boy kamikrazy War Boy_ so he clings on with his grease-blackened fingers and grits his teeth.

The driver turns to him. To Nux, he looks old, but when everyone around you dies in battle or from sickness before middle age, anyone over eight thousand days tends to look old. The man’s face is sun browned, roughened by sand winds with a forehead deeply lined by a perpetual frown. The heavy lidded eyes that Nux finds himself staring into are a stormy colour he doesn’t have a word for. Nux can’t figure out where he’s from, what gang he’s a part of. He doesn’t look like he’s from any of the gangs Nux knows of. He doesn’t look like anyone Nux has ever seen before, and it sets him on edge. 

For what feels like an age they just stare at each other, this foreign man so still and silent while Nux is trying his hardest not to move, breathing shallow and quick, heart in his throat. Finally Nux’s will breaks and he speaks first, low, putting a growl into his voice.

“Who are you?” he tries to make it hard, a demand, tries his best to sound fierce. To sound like a threat. _I am a threat_ , he tells himself, _I am a War Boy_. The voice in his head is less convincing than he’d like it to be, but it almost drowns out the one muttering _mediocre, mediocre, mediocre_ over and over again. “What gang are you with?” With every word the taste of blood in his throat gets stronger.

“No gang.” 

It’s more of a grunt than actual words. The man’s voice is hoarse with disuse, but deep, and Nux can sense power in it. If he wasn’t a War Boy, it might be frightening. At least his accent is familiar, the same as everyone else’s. They stare for a minute longer, the man’s face unreadable, his whole body motionless. Nux can feel his brain throbbing in his head. He wishes he could crack his skull open just to let some of the pressure out. 

It dawns on him slowly, who this man must be. What he must be. The panic digs in under his ribs again, snaking around his bones, biting at his gut, taking hold so hard he can’t shake it off. Piece by piece his tired bruised head puts it together; the chains on his wrists, the grate partition, the man’s unfamiliar appearance, his lack of paint war paint, or gang symbols of any kind. 

“You’re a Copper,” he half gasps, the word foreign and strange in his mouth. Still the driver barely reacts, just looks at him as Nux’s heart jumps in his chest, setting his blood pounding hard and fast through his sick veins. “You’re a filthy rusty Copper!” His voice rises, that nasty dirty shameful _panic_ and _fear_ surging up from his chest into his throat, out through his mouth. He can stop it, can’t swallow it down. He’s heard of Coppers, everyone has. Outsiders who patrol the edge of the desert, keeping the gangs from overflowing into the rest of the world. They capture War Boys, Nux knows, and other desert dwellers and take them away to giant Prisons, cages where they’re kept locked up like blood bags for the rest of their half-lives, deprived of doing war, deprived of dying historic, deprived of Valhalla. Nobody comes back from the Prisons. 

The man still doesn’t react and it’s driving Nux out of his mind. He rattles the grating and screams at him, spitting and thrashing and if only he was stronger he could tear the grating right off and kill the man with his hands and take his car, kill him _kill him kill him KILL HIM_ - 

He only stops screaming when his breath catches and he ends up in a coughing fit instead, blood and gunk filling his throat and choking him and spluttering over his chin. His head is spinning so fast he’s not sure which way is up anymore and his ears are ringing like sirens, loud enough to drown out everything else. 

By the time the man speaks Nux’s head has stilled a little and there’s blood warm and wet sticking his eyelashes together. 

“You done?”

Steady and low, in another situation his voice might’ve been soothing. Nux drags the back of his wrist over his mouth and nods slowly, reluctantly. He keeps his eyes on the man’s face, wary like a cornered dog.

“Are you taking me to Prison?” Nux asks, voice as controlled as he can make it.

“Not personally.” 

More staring, Nux’s jaw tight.

“And I’m not a cop.”

Nux presses up against the bars again, wide eyes, wetting his lips with his tongue. 

“Who are you, then? What are you gonna do with me?”


	3. Chapter 3

Slit wakes up to the familiar cold stone of the medical bay at his back and pain pulsing through so much of his body it takes him a few minutes to figure out his head from his arse. Pain is nothing new, though. Pain is nothing he can’t handle. He lets his head fall back against the stone and sits still and lets the pain wash over him, finds where it’s most focused - the back of his skull; his ribs and wrist on the left feel broken; his right shoulder has _definitely_ been dislocated and popped back in, and there’s barely an inch of him that hasn’t been grazed and scraped up by sharp sand. Underneath there’s the gentle sting of a needle in his wrist, filling him up with fresh new blood. He absorbs the pain, makes it part of him, lets it fuel him. Slit breathes in deeply, forcing himself not to flinch as lungs swell under his broken ribs, and out again. War Boys all have their own way of handling pain. They need to, or they wouldn’t last. This is his. 

Sitting still, he feels the pain buzzing hot and heavy through him and forces his brain to work. He remembers the rig rolling with him still on his perch, remembers the impact of the roof, the noise of nothing but metal on metal on skin and bone crunch crunch crunch in his ears. The Gates were probably open to him, then, and Slit takes a moment to lament that he didn’t reach them - but then, if Nux wasn't going with him, he wouldn’t want to go. Not without his driver.

Slit’s eyes snap open. 

_His driver_.

He’s on his feet in seconds, yanking the needle from his arm, the pain suddenly gone from his mind because it’s filled up with _Nux Nux Nux._

Nux is his driver and he’s not _there_ and he doesn’t even know where he is, just that he’s gone and it hits him all at once and it’s so wrong, this sudden cold heaviness in his gut as he realises he lost his fucking _driver_ , that Nux is out there in the desert somewhere and he doesn’t know where.  

Lancers don’t _lose_ their drivers. Especially not valuable ones like Nux. Nux even has all his fingers, for fuck’s sake. 

Slit grabs the nearest passing War Boy roughly by the arm - he’s young, barely more than a pup, and Slit can tell he recognises him by the shock and badly concealed fright on the boy’s face - and pulls him round to face him. 

“Where’s Nux?” He growls, getting in the boy’s face, taking confidence and a little satisfaction from the way he shrinks and cowers under his hand. Slit isn’t the tallest but he’s visibly very strong, and combined with the gashes up his cheeks that are still held together by sliver staples he practically radiates ‘intimidating’.

“I dunno Slit, I swears it!” The boy blurts, instinctively gripping Slit’s wrist, “The salvage crew ain’t back yet.”

Slit shoves him aside, easily putting several feet of distance between them with just a push, and sets off running out of the medical bay, praising the great V8 that it was his wrist that broke, not one of his legs. 

He gets outside in time to see clouds of dust in the distance, heralding the salvage crew’s return from the East, where Slit and Nux and a gang of a handful of others had clashed with a stray Buzzard. The sand is hot on his feet as he runs out to meet them. He ignores how his injured ribs scream in protest with every breath. As if his ribs matter. _Nux_ matters.

As one of the cars approaches it slows enough for him to fling himself onto the lancer’s perch, and from the scramble down through the skylight. The driver, a young War Boy named Crux whose black paint runs in thick stripes from his eyes to his chin, raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t try to stop him. 

“Nux,” Slit says, breathing so heavily and so fucking painfully that he can barely get the words out, “Where’s _Nux?”_

Crux glances at him briefly and gives a quick shake of his head. Slit’s insides turn to ice. His breathing is so hard it’s starting to turn to coughs, bringing the taste of blood irony and metallic to the back of his throat. He ignores it. 

“Not a fuckin’ trace of ‘im, mate,” the driver informs him, eyes barely leaving the road. Slit can feel bile rising in his stomach. 

“Corpse?” He rasps between coughs, just in case. Crux just shakes his head.

“Like I said, Slit - no fuckin’ trace of ‘im out there,” is the reply, “Good fuckin’ job losing him, ya rusty cunt,” the driver turns to sneer at him, and Slit has never had to fight harder in his life _not_ to punch someone.   

“Fuck you,” he grunts, “Fuck.”

He pops open the car door and throws himself out into the desert, rolling as he hits the ground. The pain in his side is so intense now it’s almost overwhelming, no matter how hard he tries to force himself to ignore it or absorb it or take strength from it. His blood is rushing in his ears, and his brain is nothing but _pain pain pain Nux Nux Nux._ Slit gets to his feet slowly, his unbroken hand pressed against his ribs. It’s been ages since he was last fucked up so badly, and it just had to be _now_ , didn’t it, now when his driver is missing and he has to fucking find him. One of the most valuable drivers in the Citadel. _The_ most valuable driver to him - his partner, his other half, the Boy he’s been bonded to since he was a Pup. Slit hopes to hell Nux is still alive. 

But there’s hope to be had; no corpse should mean he’s out there, somewhere. If the Buzzards had had him there’d be a body, picked clean of anything that could be useful and left naked to rot in the sand. And Crux had definitely said no corpse. Salvage crews are nothing if not thorough. Slit’s first guess is that Nux got thrown from their rig far enough to get left behind, woke up alone, and tried to walk back to the Citadel disorientated. He’s probably out there wandering in the wrong direction, Slit thinks, his thoughts vague and hazy through the throbbing of his brain. 

As much as he hates himself for it, he has to stand for a few moments to catch his breath. Standing panting and holding his ribs, he watches the dust settle as the salvage crew reaches the Citadel. Then Slit braces himself, turns, and starts walking East.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this is so short please end my awful life... i was so intimidated by the idea of writing slit because he's SO INTIMIDATING so... yeah... pls be nice thank u for reading


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mild warning for sort-of self harm? maybe ? in this chapter. it's basically nux picking at scabs but mentions getting satisfaction/release from injury, so, yeah just a warning for that!! if at any point in this fic there's something i should warn for and miss, please let me know!

“You gotta stop doin’ this, Slit. Yer gonna run me out of blood bags.”

“I’ll catch you a new one.”

Slit squints up at the Organic Mechanic, head fuzzy. Even the dim light of the medical bay is enough to hurt his eyes; his brain is aching like a motherfucker. Slit had walked East for a day and a half before his worn out body gave up on him and he was forced to stop, collapsed exhausted out in the desert. By some miracle he’d been picked up by a handful of War Boys on a training exercise, rather than a passing Buzzard. And now he’s back in the fucking med bay, probably a good deal worse off than he was to start with.

He mentally kicks himself for fucking up so badly. Uninjured, he could probably have walked a dozen days, found Nux, brought him back. Probably. But he’d overshot, and now he was paying for it with a two day loss on finding his partner.

What he really needs is a vehicle.

Slit pulls the needle from his arm and moves to get to his feet, only to be shoved roughly back down by Organic’s greasy hand square on his chest.

“Nah nah nah,” the Mechanic tuts, folding his arms across his chest and staring down disapprovingly into Slit’s face. One of his Pups scuttles over and Slit feels the slight sting of the needle slipping back into his wrist as he’s plugged back in. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere, boyo. You leave here now, and when you come back fucked up again, I won’t be fixin’ ya,” Organic tells him matter-of-factly, “I ain’t got the resources to waste on ya.” He nods to the Pup that’s still hovering by Slit’s elbow, “Keep an eye on ‘im.”

He walks off and leaves Slit glaring at the back of his head. It’s true - if he left now, with no knowledge of where Nux even was, his chances of making it back to the Citadel alive would be slim. And seeing as being dying - soft, no less - would mean no reunion with his driver, he has little choice but to sit on the cold stone, topping up, listening to the whimpering of his blood bag and the groans of dying boys.

+++

“I’m valuable.”

Nux is pressed up against the quarter-opened window of the car, poking as much of his face out as he can manage. A couple of feet away, the owner of the car is filling the car with gas. He raises an eyebrow.

“Hmm,” he grunts, disinterested. They’ve been driving for almost two days now, and Nux’s constant flitting between threatening him and trying to bargain with him has quickly gotten old. With no way of physically venting his pent up, anxious frustration at being captured Nux has spent the entire ride talking his throat raw.

“I am!” The boy insists, twisting awkwardly so he can poke his fingers out of the window, “Look, I got all my fingers still,” he wiggles them demonstratively in the air, “All my arms and legs, both eyes. Everythin’.”

The man resists the urge to roll his eyes, looks away from Nux again. Of all the War Boys he had to find unconscious in the desert, it had to be this one. Roughly twenty minutes ago, he’d made the mistake of letting slip that his incentive for taking Nux was the payment issued to anyone who managed to bring a desert-dweller in to the authorities. Nux had spent almost every second since trying to convince him of his worth to the Citadel.

“I’m one of their best drivers. I ain’t lyin’! I’m a Black Thumb, too. They’ll want me back, swears it,” he makes another futile attempt to force the window to open further, despite almost breaking his fingers failing to do so several times already, “They’ll trade you, anything you want. Produce, Mother’s Milk. Gas. Aqua Cola!”

The man looks at him again. “Aqua Cola?”

“Yes, even that! They’ve got gallons of it, more than you’d ever see!”

“The fuck is Aqua Cola?”

Nux frowns at him, wondering who in the hell wouldn’t know what Aqua Cola is. He’d seen the man drinking it; he’d even given a bottle to Nux, much to the boy’s surprise - and secret gratitude.

“Uhh, ya know. Water,” he waves a hand dismissively, “Got loads of it, Immortan has, gallons. Gallons!”

The man studies Nux’s face for a moment, his own expression still just as infuriatingly blank as it has been this whole time.

“Don’t need any of those,” he grunts, twisting the cap back onto the gas can he just emptied. Nux scrambles back round to push himself up against the metal grating again as the man gets back into the car and twists the keys in the ignition.

“What, then? What do you want?” He demands, twisting his fingers through the bars. The metal cuffs around his wrists dig into his skin, reopening the raw scrapes underneath that have risen from hours of trying to twist his hands out of them.

“Nothing they’ve got at the Citadel,” the driver assures him, pressing the accelerator and turning the car back onto the road.

Nux scoffs at that. “They’ve got everythin’ at the Citadel,” he argues. To him, it’s true.

There’s a few moments of silence. Nux chews at a scab on his thumb. It’s starting to become habitual for him to bite and scrape and pick at the shallower wounds on his arms and chest and face, until they reopen and bleed. It’s satisfying somehow to watch the blood run, and it gives him the slightest bit of an outlet for the frustration and anger and anxiety he’s been harbouring since he woke up in the back of the car. And something to do when the driver is ignoring him, which is a large proportion of the time.

“Money,” the man says finally. He speaks quietly, like he’s giving up a secret he wanted to keep. “I need money.”

“Money,” Nux repeats. The word feels strange in his mouth; he’s never heard it before. “What’s that?” he finds himself asking, repeating the word under his breath a few more times.

“Something your Citadel doesn’t have, boy.”

For some reason his tone, his disinterest, his evasiveness and refusal to just talk straight snaps Nux back into anger, into raging and thrashing and thumping against the grating.

“They’re gonna be looking for me,” Nux spits, crowding as close to the bars as he can get. He snaps his teeth, imagines sinking them into the back of the man’s neck. He’s lying, but he won’t admit that to himself, let alone his captor. “My partner, he’s gonna be looking for me. He’s gonna find me and when he does he’s gonna kill ya,” his voice rises, venomous, as dangerous as he can make himself sound, “He’ll destroy you, he’ll shred you to pieces, we’ll kill you together,” He rattles at the grating hard, spitting and swearing curses and insults, fuelled by the images in his head of himself and Slit breaking the man’s skull, tearing him apart together, 

“Kill you! KILL YOU! KILL YOU!”

In the front seat, the driver stays silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nux is back!!!!!! did you miss him for that very brief chapter that he wasn't in ... i did..
> 
> my chapters are so short. forgive me. i swear there's actual action happening soon


	5. Chapter 5

_“Slit!”_

Nux wakes with a start, the word _witness_ dying on his lips. It’s getting dark, but night hasn’t quite fallen and he can see by the soft orange glow of the setting sun. He’s shaking all over, covered in cold sweat, his heart thumping like it’s trying to escape his chest and he can’t catch his fucking breath because he’s _terrified._ There’s no reason for it but that’s what his body is telling him - that he’s terrified. 

He blinks a few times fast. The dream he just woke up from is fading but the image of it - of Slit leaping from the lancer’s perch and disappearing in an explosion of flame and voices - is lingering on the backs of his eyelids as if it was burned there as firmly as the brand on the back of his neck. He rubs his hands over his face, trying to clear the image away.  

Nux doesn’t understand why he feels like this. The image of Slit going to Valhalla, dying glorious and historic, should make him feel pride, excitement, even jealousy, but it shouldn’t _scare_ him. Nothing should. He’s a fucking _War Boy_. War Boys don’t feel fear. War Boys also don’t get fucking kidnapped and thrown in the back of a Copper car for days on end.  

He puts his face in his hands and breathes out slowly, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He needs to get a fucking grip, he tells himself, stop being so fucking mediocre or he’s never going to get back to the Citadel. Back to Slit.

“I have to piss,” he mutters to himself, then repeats louder. “Oi, dickface,” he taps on the partition, finally getting the driver’s attention, “Pull over, I have to piss.” 

The driver sighs, then swerves the car in to the side of the road. So far their journey has taken them along miles and miles of flat track through the desert, punctuated only by the occasional run down ruin of a building. Their second night on the road is falling, and they’re still facing at least another two days of driving. 

“Hands.”

They’ve done this a few times already now - even War Boys have to piss. Even sick dehydrated ones, and over the course of the journey the driver has been giving Nux water three times a day - more than he’s used to getting in a week. He still can’t wrap his head around the idea that this man just _has_ water, in big bottles that he keeps in the back of the car, enough to just drink whenever he wants it. 

Nux growls at him, but shuffles across the seats and sticks his hands out without any real fight, so that the driver can quickly attach a chain to Nux’s cuffs in order to keep a hold on him. He’s chained to the car door by the ankle, too, but that wouldn’t stop him trying to wrench the door off its hinges and making a run for it. The first time the driver let him out he’d given it a shot - flung himself full-body into attacking the man - but with his bound wrists and his illness, his barely healing injuries and the fact that, despite being the taller one by several inches, the other man is nothing but heavy muscle, Nux found himself on the floor in seconds, flat on his back, humiliated, new bruises blossoming on his jaw. 

“You don’t need to do this anymore, y’know,” Nux grumbles, fumbling with his fly, “I ain’t gonna make a run for it.” 

The man scoffs quietly. Nux frowns. 

“Alright, I’m not gonna make _another_ run for it. Honest.” 

He finishes up and wriggles about to get his trousers done back up again. Nux has never had to piss this often in his life. It’s a pain in the arse, but at least the amount of water this guy’s been giving him has started to make the constant burn in his throat subside a little.

“I don’t feel like dyin’ soft out in the desert,” he sighs to himself, nudging a small rock with the toe of his boot. 

Confused that the man still hasn’t moved or said anything, Nux looks up and over at him. The guy is standing there holding a small smoking thing in his fingers, sucking on it and puffing smoke back out of his mouth. 

“The fuck is that?” Nux asks him, taking a curious step forwards. The man holds up a hand, warning him not to come too close. Nux resists the urge to roll his eyes, but stops still anyway.

“It’s a cigarette,” the man tells him after a moment, smoke issuing from his lips with every word. He looks like an engine. Nux can’t stop watching. "Another thing your Citadel hasn't got."

“What’s it _for?”_ He presses, watching the tip of the thing glow like a little flame. 

After a moment the guy shrugs, taking the cigarette from his mouth and flicking a little mound of ash from the tip. “That’s a question,” he says to himself, then surprises Nux by taking a half step towards him, close enough to hold the cigarette out to him. “Put it in your mouth, and breathe in through it,” he tells him, with a slight nod. 

Cautiously, Nux takes the cigarette from him, stepping back to put distance between them again as soon as he’s done so. He sniffs at it briefly; the smoke smells different to engine smoke, different to anything he knows from the engine rooms at the Citadel. He wonders if it’s some kind of strange air purifier. 

As soon as he breathes in smoke fills his mouth and lungs all at once, burning and scorching and reawakening every scrape and ache in his throat. It’s hot and cloying and makes him cough, his eyes stinging against his will. 

“What the _fuck_ , _”_ he wheezes, when he’s managed to suck enough air back into his lungs to talk, “What the _fuck.”_ Nux tosses the cigarette away into the sand, hacking and spitting. His tongue feels fuzzy, and he’s more than a little bewildered as to how in hell the man had just been standing sucking away on that thing without batting an eyelid. “I feel like I just stuck an exhaust pipe in my mouth.”

“Sounds about right,” the man mutters, huffing a quiet laugh to himself. Nux glowers at him, feels his face colour with embarrassment. And then the guy stoops to pick up his cigarette from the ground, and Nux’s heart leaps into his throat. This is his chance.

He grabs the chain around his wrists and puts every last ounce of his waning strength into tugging it, hard, sending the man sprawling face first into the sand. Nux throws himself towards the car, trailing the chain with him, tearing the driver’s door open. Behind him he can hear the man scrambling to his feet, cursing and swearing. Nux fumbles with the ignition, barely half inside the vehicle. The engine revs, once, twice, but it won’t fucking start and it doesn’t help that his fingers are shaking and he can’t fucking _breathe_.   

And then there’s a hand on his neck gripping so tight he can feel it bruising and his airways closing and something hard clocks him across the back of his head and he collapses across the seats, and everything is quiet and still and very, very dark. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is bad and i am sorry. i got frustrated with it and i just wanted it over. :( i promise some actual action is happening soon tho. i also feel like i want to chance the title of this fic since it's heading in a different direction to what i originally planned, but, ufghhfgh. i dunno.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> making up for posting horribly short chapters by posting two in one day. you're welcome.

Nux spends the rest of the journey dipping in and out of consciousness, lying across the back seats of the car. His head aches and swims every time he opens his eyes; he couldn’t sit up even if he wanted to, but the shame and guilt and pure misery of defeat has sucked away any energy he’d had for fighting. His arms are still bound, but now they’ve been twisted uncomfortably behind his back, hand to elbow, and wrapped in a chain tight enough to cut and bruise his skin. His legs are similarly restrained, and the man has gone through the pockets of his trousers and stripped him of anything that could be used as a weapon. He feels strange without the familiar weight of nuts and bolts and tools and other bits and pieces weighing his pockets down.

Sometimes he opens his eyes and gazes at the ceiling of the car for an hour or two, making pictures in his head out of the endless scrapes and gouges in the metal above him. The man driving never speaks, and Nux loses himself in the thrum and rumble of the engine, the rattle of the wheels. He feels empty, like someone has cut him open and scraped out all his insides, leaving him hollow-chested and useless. The hours blur together, the sun rises and falls, and his head is full of nothing but _worthless worthless worthless._ His life had one purpose, and he’s failed, he’s fucking failed. The gates are closed to him forever, now. 

Nux squeezes his eyes shut, struggling half-heartedly to fight against the prick of hot tears in his eyes. He’s ashamed enough of himself as it is, without fucking _crying_ too. Slit would be so ashamed of him. Nux misses him so much it aches, but he knows that his partner wouldn’t even look at him if he were here now. He can hear Slit’s voice in his head, calling him filth, calling him worthless. He hears the Immortan’s voice, too, pictures Him turning away in distain, spitting _mediocre_. Nux’s breath hitches. Mediocre. That’s all he is. And he’s going to die mediocre and soft in a Prison cage all alone. Maybe it’s a good thing he was taken, and Slit wasn’t. Slit deserves a better driver than him. He turns his face towards the back of the car seats and lets shameful tears smudge his black paint down his cheeks. 

When exhaustion drags him down into true sleep, instead of just fevered half-rest, Nux dreams of Slit. His worn out brain conjures wishful images from memories and hopes and vague plans of the two of them together. Often it’s as simple as the two of them driving together, Nux’s wheel under his hands and Slit sprawled across the bonnet, whooping and shouting as they speed through the sand. In others they’re closer, curled around each other in their bunk or the back of their car or pressed up hard against a wall in an empty corridor and he can _feel_ Slit’s hands on him and his teeth in his skin and he wakes up breathless and hot with flushed cheeks and Slit’s name on his lips.

But sometimes his dreams are dark and blurry and make his heart thud with fear to a soundtrack of screams and the feeling of nails sharp in his skin but not in the way he likes. Sometimes he can see Slit being pulled away from him, see his skin catching fire and his body crumbling to ash or being crushed beneath wheels or torn apart on a Buzzard’s spikes. Sometimes he hears his lancer calling out to him, voice rough and desperate. Sometimes it’s just darkness and noise and a weight on his chest so heavy he can’t breathe, and he wakes up shaking, drenched in cold sweat. Nux hates those dreams. 

Sometimes he dreams that Slit comes and finds him and takes him back to the Citadel. He wakes up in tears. Those dreams are the worst ones. 

The man is still giving him water, but less now. A couple of times he offered Nux food that he couldn’t identify out of a can, but he wouldn’t open his mouth. Nux would take hunger over the humiliation of being spoon-fed like a fresh Pup any day. The man stops the car twice a day, morning and evening, and tops up the gas or takes a piss or smokes a cigarette or whatever he does, and then opens the passenger door and wordlessly holds a canteen to Nux’s mouth so he can drink. They don’t look at each other. 

At night the man pulls over and sleeps for two or three hours at a time; just enough to survive on. It kills Nux that his captor is right there, asleep and vulnerable, and he can’t do a thing about it. All he can do is lie there. 

He's losing his mind. 

On the sixth day - at least, he thinks it’s the sixth day - Nux hears the rumble of another car passing by. He opens his eyes, frowning, wondering if he’d imagined it. Then he hears another, and sees the shadow of it pass by. His heart rate speeds up suddenly, like an old engine sputtering to life. He tries to shuffle into a more upright position, craning his neck to try to see out of the window.

“Where are we?” he asks, voice hoarse and sore from disuse. The paper-dry skin on his lips cracks and bleeds. Nux coughs a couple of times and swallows, trying to wet his throat. “Who was that?” 

The man says nothing, but he slows the car down and makes a left turn. Nux shifts uncomfortably, anxiety beginning to build in his gut. After a something like five or maybe ten minutes, it’s hard to tell, he brings the car to a stop. Through the limited slip of the window he can see out of Nux can see dark shapes criss crossing the sky. He doesn’t know he’s looking at the branches of leafless trees. 

Nux’s chest is getting tight. Something about this feels wrong, like something is happening more than just their regular stop. Besides, the sun is at its highest in the sky. They never stop in the middle of the day. 

“What’s goin’ on?” he tries again, twisting to stare at the back of the man’s head. “Hey. Hey!” 

The man breathes out a sigh, slow and even. For a moment he just sits, head bowed over the steering wheel. Then he gets out of the car and opens the passenger door by Nux’s head, just standing there. Nux wriggles and twists around urgently, trying to figure out what’s going on. Not knowing is making him feel sick; his empty stomach is doing somersaults and it’s a fight to keep his breathing under control. 

To his surprise, the man reaches for Nux and pushes him up so he can sit more upright in the car seat. He’s not exactly gentle, but not as rough as Nux would have expected either. All it does is put him more on edge, and make his head spin with dizziness. 

“What’s going on?” Nux asks again, softer this time, nervous; he’s trying to keep his voice from shaking. Behind his back his hands are balled into white knuckle fists, blunt nails digging into his palms. 

The man is knelt on by the side of the car, resting his elbow on one knee. For a moment he just looks Nux in the face. Nux forces himself to hold his gaze despite the way his heart is thudding anxiously in his chest.

“What’s your name?” The man asks him, his voice soft and low and even. Nux is envious of his calmness, his self control. 

“Nux,” he breathes in response, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He can’t see any point in lying or arguing. 

The man stares at him a few seconds longer, then reaches over and puts a hand on Nux’s arm. He flinches away instinctively and tries to shift further from the man, but he doesn’t want to topple over again. At least sitting up he feels a little more in control, even though his limbs are bound and his head is still cloudy and his stomach is so empty it feels like it’s started eating itself. Maybe he doesn’t feel quite so in control after all. 

“I’m sorry, Nux,” the man says softly. His face and his voice both are sincere, and it pushes Nux over the edge into panic. “It’s nothing personal.” 

Before Nux can say another word, the man’s fist meets the side of his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhh i don't know how i feel about this chapter. i felt a lot more inspired writing it than the previous one cus i really love writing angsty bullshit, so. slit is back in the next one! i'm so sorry i keep ending chapters with nux blacking out jeezus. this is the last time, i swear.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eckses on tumblr drew some amazing fanart for this chapter omfg.. look at it & love it here: http://eckses.tumblr.com/post/122459916455/  
> http://eckses.tumblr.com/post/122766506270/

Nux wakes up somewhere entirely different and completely unfamiliar. He’s in a room that’s nothing but dark grey walls and a steel door, lit dimly by a single strip light that keeps flickering, making his already throbbing head hurt even more intensely. He must’ve had a headache for the past week consistently, to the point where he’s used to it; it’s just _there,_ ignorable until something makes it worse.

The same goes for the rest of his injuries; with his arms bound over the past few days, keeping him from worrying at the wounds and forcing them to open again and again, his cuts and scrapes are starting to scab and heal. He must’ve been out for a while, because there are stitches in him that weren’t there before. Half of his back is grazed and scabbing, and it itches like hell. The only wounds that aren’t healing are his wrists - the cuffs he wore for days had rubbed his skin raw and open and kept it that way. Those scars are likely to stay. 

He’s in cuffs again, Nux realises as he comes round. Lifting his hands, he stares absently at the metal, turning his wrists from side to side and watching the dull light catch it and glint. _Shiny,_ he thinks vaguely, in some far-off part of his brain. The inside of the cuffs are lined with flakes of Nux’s dried-on blood.

It could be the number of blows he’s taken to the head or it could be the fact that so much has happened so suddenly that his brain his shutting down, but he doesn’t react. He feels nothing. There’s the gnawing emptiness in his stomach and the itching of his healing wounds and the aching in his head and the dull pain of his bruises, but none of it feels real. He feels numb to it all, like someone has flipped a switch in his head and turned him off. Like he’s run out of gas. He doesn’t mind. It’s almost a relief. 

The relief doesn’t last. Nux has only been awake for a minute or two when the silence is broken by the scraping of metal on metal and the door slides open. The men who enter the room are huge; one almost as tall as he is and one a little shorter, but both of them a lot heavier. They’re dressed strangely, in clothes like nothing Nux has never seen before; white shirts and black trousers, so neat, all straight lines. They look so clean, too, not a hint of sand or dirt on them. It makes Nux frown. His brain is so worn out it takes a moment to tell him to be wary of these men, and by then they’re already right in front of him, grabbing him by the arms and hauling him to his feet.  

That’s when the numbness ends, and he wishes so badly that it had lasted because it was so much better than the wave of fear that hits him now, crashing into his chest and making his lungs feel too big for his ribs but too small to let any air in at the same time - 

Everything is a blur of white walls and too-loud voices as he’s half-dragged down corridor after corridor, so many all the same and he’s just getting more and more lost. When they finally stop and the men let him go he stumbles to his knees, out of breath, dizzy. One of the men barks at him to strip and he doesn’t move because he doesn’t understand until the man takes a long black stick from his belt and hits Nux hard in the shoulder and tells him again. 

He’s pushed naked but still cuffed onto white tiles and hit with a jet of water so cold it takes his breath away. Even outside on chill desert nights, he’s never been this cold. It raises bumps on his arms and makes him shake so hard he can barely move, teeth clattering together uncontrollably. In the Citadel War Boys wash once a month in murky lukewarm water and cover themselves in clay again as soon as they’re dry. This couldn’t be further from it. A man hands him a bar of something slippery and strange smelling - soap, but he doesn’t know what soap is, has never used soap in his life - and tells him _scrub that shit off before you go for processing._  

Nux doesn’t know what that means, and the cold is making his head feel funny, so he sits on the tile and clamps his teeth shut together and watches the clay and sand run in dirty white rivulets off his skin. Seeing his paint disappear makes him feel more naked, more bare than being without clothes ever has. The men don’t let him out from under the water until it’s running clear. He can see so much of his skin, yellowy pale and sick-looking, blue veins pressing up under the surface, and though it’s nothing new it feels so wrong and his fingers itch for a bowl of white clay to cover himself again.  

Then the water stops and he’s made to dry and dress in clothes they give him, strange clothes that aren’t like what they are wearing but aren’t like anything familiar either. They’re too clean and stiff and he feels trapped but he doesn’t have a second to adjust before he’s being pulled through corridors again, so many white walls and white floors and bright bright lights that sting his eyes.  

They stop in a dark room lit with one single bulb, with nothing inside but a table and three chairs, and he’s made to sit and one of the men attaches the chains around his wrists to a metal ring in the centre of the table. Nux is too dazed to even appreciate the shininess of his surroundings. 

A smaller person wearing clothes that match the men enters the room and makes him roll his fingertips in black ink and press them into little boxes on a piece of paper. He wants to smear the black around his eyes and nose but he can’t reach his face for the chains so he curls his hands into fists instead, keeping the ink safe.  

The shorter man asks him questions he doesn’t understand and probably couldn’t answer even if he did because he can’t find his voice. He asks his name three times before Nux manages to wet his lips and tell him. 

“Last name?”

He blinks. 

“Last name?”

“C’mon. None of these nutjobs’ve ever got last names,” grunts the taller.

Nux chews at the raised scars on his lips. 

“Date of birth?” is the next question, spoken with as much disinterest as the others. 

“What?”

“When were you born?”

He stares at the man blankly, tongue flicking over his lip in a nervous tick. 

The question is repeated. 

“I don’t know.” 

And that’s all he can say, repeating himself over and over as they ask him question upon question until the words don’t make sense anymore and it’s just noise, syllables and sentences blurring together and filling his head with monotone buzzing. It feels like forever that he’s sitting there, staring at the wall between the heads of the men opposite him. Nothing feels real; everything feels like a fever dream, the kind of nonsensical hallucinations he has when he’s sicker than usual and can’t tell if he’s awake or not. He wishes he wasn’t. He’d take the fevers over this forever.  

When they’ve finished asking him questions he doesn’t have the answers to they move him again. He closes his eyes and lets himself walk on autopilot. Every corridor looks the same, and the harsh lights are only making his headache worse. 

They leave him in a room almost identical to the one he woke up in, except that this one could almost be described as ‘furnished’. Everything is silver steel; the slabs of metal that serve as bed and desk, one for a chair and another for a toilet and sink combined. Nux stumbles as he’s nudged inside, eyes fixed on the shiny metal. He hadn’t expected the Prison to be so shiny. The door slams shut behind him and clunks locked loudly, all save for a little rectangular window that a man instructs him to put his hands through. There’s a softer clink, and the cuffs are gone. His wrists feel oddly light without them as he pulls his hands back through.  

Head hazy, and with nothing else do to, Nux wanders to the far end of the narrow room and sits down on the bed. He looks down at his arms, blinking at the angry open wounds that circle both his wrists. Slowly, he uncurls the loose fists he’s kept his hands in this whole time. The black ink on his fingertips has mostly dried, but it’s still there. He licks his lips and spits into his palm, using the moisture to make the ink run again, forming a little pool in the curve of his hand. Nux closes his eyes and smears his war paint back onto his skin.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i lied when i said last time that slit would be coming back i'm so sorry. next one is slit. next one. this chapter is out of control and very weird and i can do nothing but apologise for it and thank u for reading. like honestly. aaughfg. also i never proofread so please point out any errors that i can fix thank <3


	8. Chapter 8

After nearly two weeks in the medical bay, Slit is restless out of his mind. A restless, angry War Boy is a force to be reckoned with, and the only reason he hasn’t torn out of there already is because of Organic’s threats to never staple him back together if he does - and he knows, although he begrudges his body’s weakness, that he needs to regather his strength if he’s going to get Nux back. And that’s what matters most. Getting Nux back. 

To exorcise the pent up violent energy that has been coiling in his muscles Slit has been carving a new scar into his shoulder with a shard of sharpened metal, much to the annoyance of the Organic Mechanic, who scolds him for it daily but does nothing about it - mostly because there’s nothing he could do. War Boys aren’t meant for sitting still, and it’s a wonder Slit has stayed in the medical bay this long at all.  

But the day Slit has been waiting for is finally upon him. Trading day - the day the War Rig, driven by one of Joe’s great Imperators and crewed by War Boys, will make the journey to Gas Town to trade Aqua Cola and Mother’s Milk for guzzoline. Slit is determined to make it onto that journey, somehow. His bones won’t be healed for another few weeks, but so long as he can stand up and throw a lance, he can do war. There’s no way he’d make it onto the War Rig, but there’s a good chance he could be in one of the accompanying cars driving alongside. But for that to happen, he needs a driver.  

The Fates must hold Slit in their favour today, for the drum heralding the Immortan’s Trading Day speech has only just sounded when seconds later a bleeding mess of a War Boy is dropped onto the bench beside him, accompanied by another Boy and several Pups scrambling to attach him to a blood bag.  

Slit recognises the pair - he and Nux have driven alongside them many times before. The wounded one is the lancer, a small but heavy set boy named Calva who fights like a demon, all boundless energy. Barely conscious, he now lies still, his stomach torn open and weeping blood. It’s strange, almost unsettling to see him so quiet, so motionless. Close by his side is his driver, Rollo, who is intimidatingly tall and muscular with dark, serious eyes and a square jaw. He appears mostly unharmed save for a couple of gouges in his side; nothing that would keep him from doing his job behind a wheel.  

“What happened?” Slit grunts, watching as the Organic Mechanic disinterestedly pinches Calva’s wound shut and shoots staples into the torn flesh to hold it closed. The boy’s breathing is shallow and laboured, and Slit can see the tremor in his hands. He’s seen enough dead and dying War Boys to know who stands a chance and who doesn’t - the lancer’s chances look bleak. Rollo knows it too - concern is written across his face, clear in the furrow of his brow and the set of his jaw. 

“Buzzards,” Rollo responds without turning his gaze from his lancer, “Tryin’ to take what’s ours.”

Slit watches them for a few moments longer in silence. He tries not to think about how it must feel to watch your partner dying in front of your eyes like that - not in battle, not quick and glorious in an explosion, but dying slowly, bleeding out, watching their life fade and being powerless to do anything. Images of Nux in Calva’s place threaten to creep into Slit’s brain and he banishes them quickly. _Nux is alive_ , he tells himself, _I’m going to get him back._ Or die trying. 

“Rollo,” Slit leans closer to the driver, once the Mechanic and his Pups have dispersed, leaving Calva twitching and moaning softly on the bench. Rollo turns to him at last, but keeps a possessive hand on his lancer’s forearm. “Join the war party with me.” 

The driver’s face darkens as soon as the words leave Slit’s mouth. “What?” he growls, “and leave my lancer behind?” 

His voice is low and threatening and makes Slit back off a little, licking at the corners of his lips where his scars meet his mouth. It’s an old habit left over from when the scars were first healing that he hasn’t been able to drop.  

“There’s nothin’ left of ‘im,” Slit insists, waving a hand in the direction of the dying lancer. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because Rollo gets immediately to his feet, looming over Slit with teeth bared and hands in fists. Slit raises his hands placatingly, “I mean, he’s gonna need a lotta juice,” he tries, gesturing towards the blood bag suspended above Calva’s body, “It’ll take hours to top ‘im up.” Slit pauses, watching as Rollo’s posture relaxes a little. It’s a relief - one knock to the head from that driver and Slit has no doubt he’d be out cold on the ground.  

“Nux rode to Valhalla without me,” Slit says, preying on the fact that Rollo is probably about to lose his partner, too, “Let me follow him through the Gates.”  

Slit’s lying through his teeth. He has no intention of going to Valhalla, not today - today, he plans to hijack Rollo’s car, drive East until he finds Nux, and return victorious with his driver. Like most War Boys - especially lancers - Slit is more brawn than brains, and so his plan is simple, relying on persistence and determination and violence. Fortunately, those are areas in which he excels.  

His lie works, because the driver turns back to his dying lancer, kneeling on the ground and murmuring close to his ear. Perhaps Rollo pities him; being a lancer without a driver is not an enviable position. Or perhaps his stalwart exterior hides gullibility rather than quiet intelligence. Either way, Slit doesn’t dwell on it. Slit dwells on very little; the more you question something, the more likely it is to unravel in front of your eyes.  

After a moment of whispers too soft to hear, Rollo slips a hand to the nape of Calva’s neck. Slit averts his gaze as the two press their foreheads together, allowing them privacy for the briefest moment of affection - or at least, the closest War Boys ever come to it. 

“Alright,” Rollo says when he stands, expression cold and unreadable. “I will ride with you.”  

Slit’s pulse leaps, and he jumps to his feet, pulling the needle out of his arm. He grunts something that could be interpreted as a thank you, nodding his gratitude. Slit isn’t much one for gratitude, or verbal communication at all, but he gets the message across. 

As they walk together to the wheel rack Slit can feel wild energy buzzing electric under his skin. It feels strange to be beside Rollo and not Nux, but every step he takes is a step close to having his own driver back again. Watching Rollo take his wheel, and Slit raises his hands above his head. He slides his fingers together, forming the symbol of the engine they worship. The War Boys speak almost in unison, reverence on their tongues. 

“By my deeds, I honour Him. V8.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's slit! slit is here! my disgusting son!  
> i'm not gonna bother commenting on how short my chapters are anymore.. that's just gonna be how this goes i guess. short chapters forever.  
> i made calva & rollo up, but rollo is pretty much just the war boy version of a character from something else, name included. bonus points if you know who he is..  
> i'm so glad this fic finally feels like it's going somewhere omg, i've had this chapter loosely planned out for ages but i kept ending up writing about nux?  
> thank you so much everyone who has commented/left kudos. it means a lot.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for descriptions of injuries/self injury

The lancer’s perch is where Slit belongs. When he’s up there hours pass like seconds; his veins flood with adrenaline, sending him wild with boundless violent energy. He loses himself in the thrill of the chase and the fight - but not today. Today every moment drags by, and this energy is more frustration than thrill. Because Nux isn’t in the car beneath him. Someone else’s driver is, and Slit isn’t in sync with Rollo the way he is with Nux. He can’t feel his every move, predict every turn of the wheel or press on the breaks that he’s going to make. And Rollo and Nux couldn’t be more different. Nux is fluid and quick, youthfully impulsive in the way he handles a rig, becoming one with the vehicle he controls. He melds with his car, moves with it like quicksilver. Rollo is stiff by comparison, his movements controlled to the slightest press of the accelerator. He drives silently, and it sets Slit on edge, makes him twitchy and nervous. He’s used to Nux’s constant excited yelling from the cab of the car, whooping and cheering whenever something mildly interesting happens. It unsettles him too to be on the perch of an unfamiliar vehicle, at the mercy of a driver he lacks a bond with. He grips his perch tighter than usual, well aware that one move from the driver that he doesn’t anticipate could throw him to the sand. 

Slit fights the urge to bang on the hood of the car and shout to Rollo to drive faster. He’ll take the car soon, he reminds himself, watching the wheels whip up great waves of sand, and then he’ll find Nux again. All he needs to do is get his timing right. 

+++

Nux has never been alone in his life, not ever. Since he was born he hasn’t spent so much as two minutes on his own - he grew up surrounded by other Pups, ate with them, slept with them, played with them when they were young enough to play and worked alongside them when they grew old enough to work. He had been so young when he met Slit that he has no memory of a time before they were together - they gravitated towards each other as tiny pups, before they had names or work or war, when their only purpose was grow. Their bond had been immediate and strong; they’d grown up inseparable. Being without him now is worse than losing a limb.  

And now he is alone always. Seven days he’s been locked in his cell; he’s counted, working open the scabs on his skin so he can use a fingertip dipped in blood to paint a line on the wall above his bed for every night he spends in it.  

He’s going out of his mind. There’s nothing to do in the cell - nobody has given him purpose, nobody has told him anything. Three times a day, at the exact same every day, the little slot in the cell door opens and a pair of hands pushes through a tray. Nux isn’t accustomed to being fed so often, and the food is strange and unfamiliar; he can’t identify any of it, not by sight nor smell nor taste. He picks at it distractedly only when hunger gnaws too painfully at his stomach for him to ignore. There’s water, too, that he drinks while still barely believing that it’s being given to him so freely. It soothes the burning in his throat, but only when he swallows. The pain doesn’t stay away for very long.  

None of him is healing. It’s his own fault; with nothing to do but sit on his own til his thoughts stop making sense he spends his hours reopening the wounds he can reach, to watch them bleed, to have something sharp to cut through the dull numbness of day upon day spent the same.  

Once he’d been there for three days two of the men in uniform had hauled him back to the dark room with the table and there’d been a new woman there, again dressed differently - he’d had no idea there are so many ways for people to clothe themselves - and she had asked him questions even more bewildering than the men’s. She had asked him about his childhood, his parents - she had looked _very_ interested when he asked what parents were - he couldn’t answer a single question she had put to him. She had been kind, and called him by his name, but then she had started insulting the Immortan, asking if Nux was glad to have ‘escaped’ the ‘cult’ he’d been kept in. The men had taken him away when he spat in her face and called her filth. 

She had concluded by telling him that if he didn’t stop tearing his injuries open then they would put him in the Psych Ward. Nux doesn’t know what Psych Ward is, so it doesn’t serve as much of a deterrent. 

Whenever they take him out of the cell, they cuff him. A man in a white coat - some kind of Outsider organic mechanic, Nux supposes vaguely - has put bandages around his wrists now to protect the angry gouges the days and days of wearing cuffs have left in Nux’s skin, but they reopen and bleed through every time. Every other day they take him to stand under the cold water for five minutes, mostly to rinse off the dried blood that he keeps finding himself covered in. Afterwards the Outsider mechanic sews stitches in him that he pulls out with his nails and teeth when he gets back to the cell. 

Nux lies curled on his side on the mattress, and watches the cut in his arm split open slowly and start to spill blood. His mind wanders back to the first time Slit scarred him. They’d been young, barely older than Pups, and Slit had lain across Nux’s middle to keep him still because the pain made him squirm, and carved a mark of ownership into his shoulder with the knife he carries on his belt. Nux had marked his lancer, too, concentrating hard on keeping his fingers from shaking as he cut Slit open. Slit had taken it without flinching but with his face screwed up, teeth ground together, pretending it didn’t hurt. Afterwards they’d sat side by side and watched their wounds scab over, Nux lightheaded and buzzing with the thrill of the strengthened bond with his partner.  

He lets his arm fall and finds that scar with his fingertips now, tracing the familiar lines without having to look. He wonders if Slit has a new driver yet, a new mark. The thought makes his chest ache. 

+++

They’ve been driving for a good half an hour before Slit’s chance arrives.  

“Buzzards!” 

The cry comes from the War Rig; one of the scouts with a spyglass alerting everyone else. The spiked cars approach fast, appearing as if from nowhere over the tops of sand dunes and cascading towards the war party.  

Slit scrambles over the roof of the car so he can reach for the door handle, popping it open and swinging down into the passenger seat. Rollo takes his eyes off the road for the first time, frowning at the lancer. 

“Fuck are you doing?” he asks gruffly, gaze jumping between Slit and the Buzzards he can see through the windshield, “Get back up there, you’re the lancer.”  

“No can do, mate,” Slit grins, and then smashes his forehead into the side of the driver’s face. 

The larger War Boy loses consciousness in a second, his skull rattling with the impact of Slit’s blow and the subsequent knock against the car window. The car spins out of control, and Slit leans over to grab the steering wheel and jerk the vehicle back on track. He grips it with one hand and reaches across to open the door with the other, nudging Rollo’s body out into the sand so he can slide into the driver’s seat. A brief stab of remorse hits him as he watches Rollo’s body disappear in the wingmirror, but it doesn’t last. Nux is more important. Besides, if Rollo is a worthy War Boy, he’ll make it on his own. Maybe. 

Slit lets the car slow down and fall back from the rest of the war party. They’ll be too distracted with the Buzzards to notice; the car would be assumed lost to the Russians, and its crew with it. And the Buzzards were more interested in the grand Rig than one stray vehicle. Once the War Rig fades into the distance, obscured by clouds of sand, Slit hits the accelerator and pulls the car off the road. He heads East, towards the Outside. Towards his driver. Towards Nux.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's time for ACTION ! go slit go !
> 
> the next chapter might be the last one? i finally know how this fic is going to end .. wehheh
> 
> also, can i please direct everyone to this amazing fanart eckses on tumblr drew for chapter 7??? i mean ???? how perfect ??? http://eckses.tumblr.com/post/122459916455/ <3


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